Another word for a cartoon is , which means alive or moving.
We can also use the word animate to mean we are making something look like it is moving.
Animated cartoons and films work by using lots of drawings that show something as it moves step-by-step. Each drawing shows the next step of movement. The images can be a series of drawings, paintings or even photos of models and toys.
Some animations use models or objects instead of drawings. The animator takes a digital photo of the model, moves it a little bit and then takes another photo. The model is moved step-by-step through the movement and a photo is taken each time.
Finally, the animation program will quickly play all the photos in order to create the illusion of motion. You can save the animation as a film, ready to share online or with friends.
This is often called stop-motion animation because of the way the animator has to stop and start the camera to create the movement or motion.
Although a can help us create animations, it can still take a long time to make each image.
Animations might need 25 images for each second of film – that means nearly 1500 images are needed to make a film that is one minute long!
Computers can help us make animations without having to draw all the images one-by-one.
We can give the computer a list of instructions to tell it to move parts of an image in different ways. This list is called a . We can use instructions in our animation program like:
- move up
- move down
- swing
- bend arm
- turn
The computer will follow the instructions in the program to make the image move quickly and it will become an animation!
You can build up the animation using more instructions. You can even write different programs for different parts of your mouse or even introduce another character!.
